At least 200 people died after a dam collapsed in northeastern Sudan, eliminating the main water supply for the country of Sudan’s administrative capital, Port Sudan. (Due to Sudan’s civil war, the country’s military leaders and ranking civil servants moved to Port Sudan from Sudan’s war-wracked official capital, Khartoum, which has been devastated by fighting).
Local residents are now burying their dead in the desert, as flood waters recede.
The Arbaat dam collapsed as Sudan, an arid country that is partly desert, was hit by heavy rainfall leading to disastrous floodwaters in four of its states.
The United Nations says at least 50,000 homes and twenty villages in Red Sea State were destroyed after the Arbaat Dam collapsed, suddenly releasing huge amounts of water.
Ali Issa, a local resident, says people were trapped in vehicles due to the floodwater. “There were seven lorries carrying families, elderly and children” trapped in the floodwaters. “We came to see what had happened but were not able to get to the dam.”
The floods are aggravating the effects of Sudan’s bloody civil war. The Sudanese army has been fighting a rogue militia, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), since April 2023, a war that has displaced at least ten million people in Sudan.
Port Sudan and the surrounding areas of Red Sea state will likely face severe shortages of drinking water as a result of the dam collapse. The dam contained the main water supply for Port Sudan. The region is desert, and most of it has little potable water.
The dam burst on the night of August 24 following heavy rains. It is 25 miles north of Port Sudan, and is where the two upper branches of the river Nile merge in Sudan.
The country has been dealing with heavy rainfall and floods since the end of June, with the United Nations estimating that at least 300,000 people were forced to leave their homes because of the flooding. The states most affected by the flood include North Darfur and West Darfur in Sudan’s impoverished west, as well as the relatively prosperous River Nile state in Sudan’s north. The states of North Darfur and West Darfur are experiencing intense hunger and rising mortality, because they are in areas controlled and systematically looted by the Rapid Support Forces, which drove the Masalit ethnic group out of the area after killing many thousands of them.
Over a million people could starve to death in Sudan unless relief supplies start going into Sudan at a much higher rate than they are now. Sudan could be the breadbasket of Africa. But due to civil war, it is a place where tens of thousands of people are starving to death. The Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which are fighting Sudan’s military, steal food from the populace, and have damaged irrigation systems, while the military has blocked trucks carrying international food assistance into areas controlled by the RSF.
The RSF interfered with harvests in Sudan’s Jazira state, which is “home to one of the largest irrigation systems in the world,” reported CNN. Thousands of farmers fled the RSF into areas controlled by Sudan’s military, which is not very kind to civilians, either.
Tens of thousands of Sudanese have previously died of starvation during the war. Thousands of bodies were left decomposing in morgues in the country’s capital. At least 150,000 civilians were killed in fighting between Sudan’s warring factions.
Frankenstein’s monster has turned on its creator, in Sudan. Over a decade ago, Sudan’s military created the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a genocidal militia it used to wipe out villages inhabited by some African tribes in Sudan’s Darfur region. Now, this Frankenstein’s monster, the RSF, is fighting Sudan’s military in a civil war, and has taken over most of Sudan’s capital region, its breadbasket region, and its vast western expanses. It is slaughtering males from western Sudan’s black African Masalit tribe. And it is turning some women into sex slaves, while raping others.
Recently, the RSF renewed its bloody mass killings and rapes to drive the Masalit ethnic group from Sudan into the neighboring country of Chad. At a single camp for displaced people in Western Sudan, the RSF slaughtered 1600 people, almost all Masalit. It killed many thousands of Masalit in and around the city of El Geneina, the biggest city in Sudan’s West Darfur region.
